Headed for the lecture hall? The RR-US570's ($109.95 direct) claim to fame is its zoom microphonePanasonic's term for the mic on the recorder's backside that focuses on sounds in front of the device and minimizes surrounding noise. It even has a tiny prop-up stand that helps aim the voice recorder at, say, a lectern or the head of a conference-room table.

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Measuring 4.3 by 1.6 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and weighing 2.7 ounces with two AAA batteries, the RR-US570 is fairly easy to operate with one hand, although you may want to carry a magnifying glass in the otherfine-tuning the settings involves navigating menus with tiny text and icons on a narrow monochrome display that's not backlit.

The RR-US570 is a fairly straightforward MP3 recorder with 1GB of flash memory (a $130 model, the US590 packs 2GB) divided into four folders holding up to 99 files each, plus a music folder that holds up to 999 files. Three levels of recording quality dubbed XP (44kHz sampling), LP (22kHz), and SLP (8kHz) with a choice of mono or stereo yields a range of recording capacities from 17 to 287 hours. The sound quality of SLP files was very poor.

I tested the device in a simulated classroom environment, 20 feet away from a podium with a radio chattering off to one side, and it worked: While it wasn't a day-and-night difference, the Zoom mode did reduce the background sound and help us focus on the lecturer's words, especially when playing sound files back on a PC. Switching from Zoom to Wide (surround recording) mode, meant for capturing the words of everyone at a conference table, made the radio voices noticeably more prominent.

You can not only lock files against accidental deletion (although a yes/no confirmation before erasure makes accidents unlikely), but lock the unit in case of loss, so it'll neither play back files nor allow copying of files to a PC unless you enter a four-digit PIN. On the minus side, you can't split a file to make it more manageable or to delete unwanted portions, and you can't add bookmarks or index marks to files as you can with the Olympus WS-500M and the Philips Digital Voice Tracer LFH0662.

As for transcribing voice files, it takes a menu selection to activate the backspace or the "replay last five seconds during playback" function, but it's easy to rewind, advance, and select start and end points for repeated playback or looping. Though not as handy as the Sanyo ICR-FP600D's dedicated buttons, there's a menu option to slow or speed up playback (to 50, 75, 150, or 200 percent of normal speed) without distorting voice tones.

Like the Philips Voice Tracer, the RR-US570 comes with a mini USB cable for drag-and-drop file transfers with a PC. The integrated, swing-out USB arm on the Olympus recorder is more convenient since you never have to worry about carrying (or losing) a cable. The recorder can sync with Windows Media Player, but it plays music MP3s in an order based on their folder hierarchy rather than playlists, showing only a number rather than album and artist data for each, with repeat but no shuffle function available.

In addition to Zoom and Wide modes, the RR-US570 offers a Manual mode where you can specify microphone sensitivity and mono or stereo recordingor, more likely, leave it at the factory defaults for personal, hold-the-device-to-your-mouth dictation. It was in this mode that the first unit we tested encountered a problem: Sometimes the voice-activated recording feature worked properly, turning long gaps into just a few seconds of silence, but other times it ran amok, skipping segments of talk or truncating voice files.

Switching off voice-activated recording solved the problem in my tests, as did using voice activation in Wide and Zoom modes. But the bug was serious enough for us to ask Panasonic for help, and the company sent two more replacement recorders that exhibited the same glitch. It's difficult to tell if this problem affects only this particular batch of recorders, or if it's a widespread issue. A fourth and final test unit worked perfectly.

The 1GB Panasonic RR-US570'a list price$10 higher than the 2GB Olympus and Philips recordersis a drawback, as is its lack of a bookmark function, and there's also the issue with voice-activated recording that I experienced. I was impressed with the zoom microphone, but I'd still recommend our Editors' Choice, the $100 Olympus WS-500M over this model.

As lead laptop analyst, Eric Grevstad heads up PCMag.com's coverage of notebook PCs, Windows tablets, and related peripherals. Before joining the team in 2011, he ran several personal technology sites for the Internet.com network and...

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